“The second edition will run October 8-11, 2015 at the San Mateo Event Center and will showcase important artworks of the 20th and 21st centuries in collaboration with some of the world’s most respected galleries and art institutions.

In keeping with Art Miami’s high standards of quality, the Fair will offer a sophisticated, curated setting that showcases blue-chip Post-War and Modern works as well art by top Contemporary, Emerging and New Media artists.”

I especially enjoyed “Prelude to Spectra”, a large-scale practice performance piece, inviting visitors to engage with the facade of the San Mateo Event center by shooting paintball bullets onto the entrance of the fair. It is a project by Walter & Zoniel, who plan to perform something similar in the UK in 2016 on a face of a historical building with biodegradable paint. So I gave it a “shot” and did my part to make it a memorable piece.

During my last trip to San Francisco in October 2015, I went to Akiko’s Restaurant again. It is one of my favourite sushi restaurants and is located at 431 Bush St near the Dragon’s Gate to Chinatown in San Francisco. I have been there in 2014, and to make it short, it’s still great.

It is still supposed to be of the very few restaurant that can at all be compared to my all time favourite Sushi Ran in Sausalito, which has been the best for more than 30 years according to Michael Bauer… and I agree. Akiko’s is always well booked, so just as last time we went there despite no seats being available and got squeezed in just after opening at 5 pm with some awesome seats at the sushi bar.

Sashimi Platter

This time I went there with a friend from Germany and we shared an amazing omakase experience, starting off with a great sashimi platter. It was made of 12 pieces: 2 pieces of ji-kinmedai (“cold smoked” golden eye snapper), 2 pieces of unimasu (ocean trout), 2 pieces of isaki (grunt fish), 1 piece of hotate (scallop), 1 piece of mirugai (giant clam), 2 pieces of hamachi suna zuri (yellowtail belly cut) and 2 pieces of mebachi maguro (big-eye tuna).

Omakase Menu

After that we we had some awesome Uni (sea urchin) enrolled in chu toro (medium fatty blue fin tuna). The uni was incredibly fresh and sweet, but the tuna was even better. It melted on the tongue and made this dish a absolute delight long to be remembered. Although we almost passed out after this delicious dish, we had even more according to the check. One should never stop short off bursting, since you don’t come by often, I suppose. Anyway, we continued with Shima Aji (stripped jack, white trevally) sashimi.

After that we switched to nigiri for some reason. Although nigiri is also great it really fills you up with rice, so pretty soon there will be no room for more. But not yet. We tried some awesome Ayu (river trout “sweet fish”) and Kamasu (young barracuda). Since we don’t have sweet fish and barracuda at any restaurant I know at home, it’s always nice to try something different.

For the grand finale we had the most terrific grade A5 Miyazaki Magyu (Japanese Black Cattle) nigiri. It was amazing and was prepared in front of us since we had seats at the sushi bar.

chu toro and uni sashimi (medium fatty blue fin tuna and sea urchin)

shima aji sashimi (stripped jack, white trevally)

ayu nigiri (river trout “sweet fish”)

kamasu nigiri (young barracuda)

a5 miyazaki wagyu (Japanese Black Cattle)

a5 miyazaki wagyu nigiri (Japanese Black Cattle)

What a great dinner and definitely among the best sushi experiences I ever had. But wait for my posts on my 2 visits to Sushi Ran during this trip.

As you might remember, I started experimenting with my LEICINA SPECIAL Super8 camera and finally made it to send in the first cartridge of Super8 8mm film material for development. I used Kodak Tri-X black & white Reversal Film and chose Wittner Cinetec in Germany as a service provider. About 2 weeks after sending my material I received the developed film.

8mm – developed 8mm film material – 1

Costs to shot, develop and digitise 8mm film

A 50ft (15m, around 3.5 minutes at 25 fps) cartridge costs 25€ to develop including shipping costs. Considering the 22€ to 40€ for the material, it basically sums up to 13.42 € to 18.58 € per minute. Additional costs might come up for digitisation of the film for digital post processing.

In the worst case of just digitising one spool, this might add up to 23.40 €. For lets say 8 15m film spools (resulting in 120m of material) it would add up to 86,40 € and 10.80 € per spool. This would add up to 20.10 € to 25.26 € per minute with one spool and 16.50 € to 21.66 € per minute with 8 spools all costs considered. That’s not cheap.

I am not sure how much filmed material is usually produced for 1 minute of finally used material in an amateur film setting. At a relation of 1 to 8, a 3,5 minute amateur 8mm movie might add up needing 28 minutes of raw material resulting in costs of 462.00 € to 606.48 € depending on the used film just to get the shot material developed and digitised. That’s 132.00 € to 173.28 € per minute. Not cheap at all.